@neilL: Strange, it doesn't ask me. Maybe that's because I'm accessing it from a university network.
– Ankur BanerjeeMay 10 '11 at 13:27

@Ankur Banerjee: Your uni probably gets multiple access dirt cheap on account of it being mainly used by students. The headline subscription price for the rest of us is nearly $300 p.a. - even if I weren't unemployed I doubt I'd fork out that much.
– FumbleFingersMay 10 '11 at 16:08

As Sunderland was once known for shipbuilding there was only 2 main forms of employment...shipbuilding by day and stealing from the ships they'd helped build by night. Apparently there was a saying "they mak'em then tak'em" meaning they build (the ships) then steal from them. The mak'em bit stuck and so we are now known as 'makems' or so they say!!?

That's just what Wikipedia says in OP's link anyway, and he obviously doesn't entirely trust that. So I'm not sure repeating it here actually gets us anywhere. It seems to be a very recent coinage though, probably just after the entire Sunderland shipbuilding industry finally shut down completely. So maybe it is a whimsical memorial tribute to the (recently) bygone age. If OED can't establish the origin of so recent a term, I doubt we'll find it here unless the actual person who coined it posts an answer.
– FumbleFingersMay 10 '11 at 2:37

@Ankur Banerjee: Depends on your definition of recent. Even the phrase "they mak'em then tak'em" only seems to have appeared in 1973, and OED put considerable effort into establishing that the first printed use of Mackem to mean Sunderlander was in 1988. Which maybe not coincidentally was the year the last shipyard was closed. I'd call that recent, in that it's not exactly an established tradition. Anyway, here's what looks like a trustworthy link... sunderlandwiki.com/index.php?title=Mackem
– FumbleFingersMay 11 '11 at 15:20

My uncle was from Sunderland and was clear that it was a reference to the difference in accent which differentiated a Tynesider from a Wearsider. Geordies would say "maek" and "taek", Wearsiders "mak" and "tak". Nothing to do with shipbuilding. There was probably more shipbuilding on the Tyne than the Wear.

I should add that my uncle and my parents were born in the 1920s and knew this usage from childhood. It's not a recent coinage.

To just add to the comment about "Mackem" also being related to football, the word effectively seems to have two meanings now: someone who's from Sunderland, and someone who supports Sunderland AFC. Clearly, many or most Sunderland fans will be from the city anyway, so there's no distinction for those people. But, someone from outside Sunderland, and who therefore isn't a Mackem in the "traditional" sense of the word, will be referred to as a Mackem if they support that team.

As a child in Newcastle, it was explained to me that the Wearside (Sunderland) ship-builders would vigorously underquote those on Tyneside (Newcastle). They would make the ships, but run out of resources, and hence the more reputable shipbuilders on Tyneside would take the partially finished ships and complete the work. Hence "They mack'em and we tack'em". This is translated as one of the following:

They make them and we take them

They make them and we tack them, i.e. fix them up.

As you might guess, this explanation was given to me by a loyal and wildly biased Geordie, who would never have a good word to say about "the great unwashed" from local rivals Sunderland, so is added more as an aside, rather than genuine etymology.

It comes from when miners, Geordies (Newcastle) called Sunderland makems. It's also to do with football and the rivalry, but the name "Mackem" came from the mining days and is an insulting word towards people of Sunderland.

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